MURFREESBORO — The Forrest Hall Task Force will receive its final batch of public input on Thursday about the Middle Tennessee State University building named after the controversial Confederate general.

When the 17-member panel convenes at 5:30 p.m, they’ll meet at the Keathley University Center — a university building that had its own battle over Confederate imagery more than 25 years before.

The decades-old student center was dedicated in 1968 with a 600-pound bronze medallion engraved with the image of a Confederate cavalry soldier resembling Forrest.

After hundreds of students protested in fall 1989, the emblem was removed from campus at the end of the semester, the final days of then-President Sam Ingram’s administration.

“I was stunned,” said Vincent Windrow, then a student who called for the removal of the medallion. “It was unbelievable.”

As with the Forrest Hall debates, the discussion over the KUC medallion was not the first skirmish about the Civil War emblems on MTSU’s campus. For decades, university officials have grappled with the role of Confederate imagery and how it affects campus and the broader community.

Much of the institution's controversies have been connected with Forrest, the Civil War general and cavalryman with strong ties to the state.

While critics have questioned Forrest's role in the early Ku Klux Klan and how his troops handled the Fort Pillow massacre in West Tennessee, supporters call the Confederate general a brilliant military mind who denounced the KKK before his death.

The university’s history with the Confederacy largely developed in the mid-20th century decades after MTSU was founded, said Derek Frisby, a global studies professor, chair of the Forrest Hall Task Force and author of an essay investigating the role of Forrest on campus.

As soldiers returned from military service and enrolled at the university through the G.I. Bill, Frisby said there was a desire to create a mascot and symbols for the university and to connect with the broader community “still recovering from the war physically and emotionally.”

Forrest was known locally for his unit’s raid into a Union-occupied Murfreesboro to save the lives of residents and Confederate soldiers held captive at the historic courthouse.

“To them, this was a completely logical choice,” Frisby said. “It bonded the community and campus together.”

The memory of the Confederate general experienced a sort of regional revival during the 1950s, when Dixie symbols were popular on college campuses, Frisby wrote in his essay, “The Blue Raiders and the Gray Wizard.”

By the end of the 1950s, the university's mascot was a Forrest-like figure, the marching band played “Dixie” as a fight song and the school’s ROTC building was named after the cavalryman, Frisby wrote.

While the emblems took hold in that decade, Frisby said there was no evidence that university officials endorsed them because of race.

“It’s hard to argue there was a conspiracy,” Frisby said in an interview. “Sometimes a coincidence is just that. But it did create some problems.”

As the university expanded to 7,500 students and integrated in the late 1960s, the symbols remained and were supplemented by the medallion at the Keathley University Center opened in 1968.

Also in 1968, discussion of those symbols broke open after black student Sylvester Brooks wrote a column questioning the university’s Confederate emblems.

In the column in the Sidelines student newspaper, Brooks examined Forrest’s ties to the early Ku Klux Klan and role in the Fort Pillow massacre. As long as the campus had remnants honoring Forrest, Brooks said he would never feel fully part of the university.

“He was just a fixture, and worse than that, he was supposed to be representative of a historic figure of Nathan Bedford Forrest, General Nathan Bedford Forrest,” Brooks said in 2000 as part of an MTSU history project.

“To have this man as symbolic of the mascot of this school, particularly a public school, was repugnant and just unacceptable.”

The column helped spark continued debate about the emblems and their roles on campus. While the school’s student government voted to oppose changes to the school’s mascot and fight song, university presidents M.G. Scarlett and Ingram chose to transition the school away from “Dixie” and the Forrest mascot by the end of the decade, Frisby wrote.

While discussions about the fate of the medallion continued off-and-on as MTSU continued to expand, the debate resumed in force after a group of students including Windrow, now the university's assistant vice provost for student success, questioned its place near the top of the university’s student center.

Like Brooks, Windrow started the semester by writing a piece for the Sidelines student newspaper.

“It really was asking a question of whether it was a fit for the university, and if so, why?” Windrow said.

With African-Americans making up about 10 percent of the student population, Window asked what message was sent through the university’s ties to Forrest and who could change that message and symbolism.

The column set the tone for debate the fall semester, when Windrow said hundreds protested in front of Keathley University Center.

By the end of the semester, Windrow helped form the university’s first NAACP chapter. Ingram, who was stepping down as president at the end of 1989, was apparently also ready to make a change.

Around the end of final exams, Windorow said he received a call from Ingram saying he thought the student "had an early Christmas present."

Windrow’s next call was from a fraternity brother telling him the medallion was coming down.

In an interview last week, Windrow said the decision by Ingram was a courageous one made on behalf of the entire campus.

“I don’t think Dr. Ingram did it for the sake of black students,” Windrow said. “I think he did it for the student environment itself."

The response was not the same, however, from those who believed Ingram acted too quickly and without consulting community members beyond the NAACP chapter that took issue with it.

Local and state leaders received letters from Murfreesboro residents and Middle Tennesseans condemning the move, including one from Albert H. Baxendale Jr., a Nashville resident who wrote under the letterhead of “The Cause!:Organized to Protect and Preserve Southern Heritage.”

“Mr. Ingram’s action in destroying a part of Southern heritage, spending public funds to remove valuable art, disregarding any and all considerations from tax-paying patriotic citizens, should not be condoned,” Baxendale said in the letter from the papers of former state Rep. John Bragg kept at MTSU's Gore Center.

After receiving at least two notes from Baxendale, then-Gov. Ned McWherter sent a response to him in May 1990. He wrote that he asked David Manning, a member of his cabinet, to examine the situation.

Manning told McWherter that the decision to remove the medallion was “well within the jurisdiction of the campus, and to the best of his knowledge, violated no Building Commission procedures,” the governor’s letter stated.

“The decision was a campus decision, made by President Ingram, upon his belief that this action was in the best overall interest of the University,” McWherter wrote.

Ownership of the medallion was eventually given to the Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park near Camden along the Tennessee River. The medallion still sits at the entrance of the state park, said Robert Wood, the park’s manager.

Ingram, however, had already left the university by the time those opposed to the decision started to mobilize and respond.

After James Walker was hired as permanent president in 1991, the negative responses still flowed in. Walker, who was black, continued to respond to letters about the issues as late as 1993, more than three years after the medallion was taken down.

In one, he reminded a Murfreesboro resident about other ways the Confederate general still had ties to campus.

“Though there appears to be concern over the removal of the plaque, I do want to inform you that we have a building on our campus named for Nathan Bedford Forrest,” Walker said in a letter. “Forrest Hall houses our Military Science Department and is located centrally on campus.”

Debate continues

The discussion to determine the future of Forrest Hall has already differed from the methods used in past debates.

Like during the last debate over the hall’s name in 2006 and 2007, two public forums were held to encourage people for and against the emblem to speak. The task force is set to make a recommendation to MTSU President Sidney McPhee at the end of this semester.

If McPhee decides to call for a name change, approval from the Tennessee Board of Regents and the Tennessee Historical Commission would be required before any action could be taken.

If a former president like Ingram was in these circumstances, he would create a similar system for deliberation too, Windrow said.

“The process will provide the result which is best for everyone involved,” he said.

McPhee told The Daily News Journal that bringing a variety of perspectives to the table is crucial when making decisions like this one.

“As an academic institution, it is important to foster and encourage discussions among and with our students and stakeholders on significant concerns,” McPhee said in an email. “It has been my practice and philosophy as a university administrator to listen and consider different voices on important matters like this. I value the work of the task force to seek out a variety of perspectives.”

What prior debates could bring to the take, Windrow said, was a stronger sense of civility. When protests occurred when he was a student in the late ‘80s, those for and against keeping Confederate symbols showed each other personal respect when they disagreed.

“Being sensitive is a major key to understanding where people come from,” Windrow said. “I don’t think shouting matches help anything.”